De Swerte Doren

𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐠𝐨 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲…

𝐃𝐞 𝐒𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐬

I have a love of maps, and a favourite of mine is the Rene Stevens ‘Carte de la Forêt de Soignes’ from 1910. Hand coloured too, this founding member of Les Amis de la Forêt de Soignes was also an artist of renown.

He had an extensive knowledge of the history and geography of The Forest, and if he indicated something on the map, it wasn’t spacefiller. It was either there, had been there or was a site of historical importance.

So I’ve started tracking these places down, to see if anything remains after 115 years or so.

Not far from where I live, I saw a reference to ‘De Swerte Dorens’, you can see it on the map.

Interesting to me are the names of the paths nearby. De Swerte Dorens, its meaning we shall explore soon enough, lay at the intersection of Chemin de Serpolet and Chemin Monpignon. The former is now known as Wildetijmweg and the later as Puntgevaldreef. These are linguistic synonyms and fascinating in their own way. Serpolet is French for Wild Thyme and what we see here is the administrative French of the time being used, before the legal linguistic changes we now see today. Stevens uses it for the names of the paths but not always for the older features, like De Swerte Dorens. In the same way, what is now called Puntgevaldreef was then ‘Chemin Montepignon’.

Gables? In French architecture, a ‘pignon’ is the triangular upper structure at the end of a roof. ‘Mon’ is a contraction of ‘Mont’ or hill, so what we have here is a ridge-path along a gable-shaped hill crest. The path is above the valleys which fall away to both sides, it remains dry and later supports Forestry traffic. Stevens thought it apposite to indicate 130m above sea-level, very close to the highest point in The Forest. ‘Puntgevaldreef’ says the same thing, but with a difference. Now it is no longer a path (chemin) but a ‘Dreef (Drève or Drive). An usage change reflecting its importance as somewhere where you can drive vehicles.

And then the place-name itself. De Swerte Dorens (The Black Thorns) preserves the spoken dialect of the time, Brabantine, pre-standard Dutch. Today we would say sleedoorn (blackthorn, Prunus spinosa), the plant that bears sloes, currently flavouring my Christmas gin. Blackthorn favours open, sunny, hedge-like margins, not deep shade. So although I searched, I expected none.

And so it proved. Under a closed beech canopy, with solitary larch and scaggy holly, there was little light and no old trees. The landscape has changed. Stevens did not mishear nor misunderstand, the ground has simply moved with the times.

Old maps can teach us from what is still there, but just as much from what is missing.

The landscape had changed, Stevens was too good an artist, a cartographer, to have gotten it wrong. The place was more open 125 years ago but as the usage fell, the beech canopy regained influence and Blackthorns, deprived of the light, died.

We can learn a lot from maps, from what is there and from what is no longer.